Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 5.djvu/34

CHANGARS. Upper Provinces; but they are comparatively harmless in comparison with the Sanseeas, Khunjurs, and others, who are bold and habitual dacoits. The Changars are not numerous, and are unknown in the Deccan and other Southern Provinces of India. It is a difficult ethnological problem to determine to what class of aborigines these isolated wandering tribes belong. Unlike the Sonthals, Gonds, Koles, and other large and united tribes, which were driven from the plains of India by the Aryans, and took refuge in the hilly tracts of Central India, the Sanseeas, Changars, and other cognate tribes seem to have hung to the Aryans, and, unaffected by their civilization, to have followed them, feeding, as it were, on the garbage left by them, never changing, never improving, never advancing in social rank, scale, or utility; outcasts and foul parasites from the earliest ages, they so remain, and probably will continue as long as they are existent. The Changars, like other vagrants, are of dissolute habits, indulging freely in intoxicating liquors, and smoking ganja, or cured hemp leaves, to a great extent. Their food can hardly be particularised, and is usually of the meanest description; occasionally, however, there are assemblies of the caste, when sheep are killed and eaten; and at marriages, and other domestic occurrences, feasts are provided, which usually end in foul orgies. In their clothes and persons the Changars are decidedly unclean, and, indeed, in most respects, the repulsiveness of the tribe can hardly be exceeded.